1.
November 11th. 2014.
The silence drifted over England
Like the smoke from a cannon
After the echoes had faded.
A million million poppies fell from the clouds,
At 11 am preciously.
Small drops of congealed blood
Settling on upturned faces
Pale with the cold.
Fear cuts into the silence a cruel wound
Deeper than grief can stab.
A terror of what might occur
Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after,
Is almost more compelling
Than tears for the maimed and the dead.
The past is the past,
What happened is merely what happened.
The dead have buried the dead
In pits dug where they had fallen
On the killing grounds of France.
Dead Man`s Dump has been levelled.
It is the fear of a future catastrophe
That makes us stand here in silence
Under the blood red snow.
The fear that someone just might
Press down a small red button
And blow the world to pieces.
One moment of lazy thinking
Converting the Earth into ashes.
I bare my head to the poppies.
They are lighter than the breath of children.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 11th. - 13th. 2013.
Eight new lines added, September 23rd. 2017.
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2.
Mr. Baxter.
He kept me awake all night with his coughing,
Our Mr. Baxter.
His lungs scraped raw by gas
As he crouched in the slime of the trenches
Waiting to kill or be killed.
These fierce wounds saved his life,
But almost a lifetime later I lay awake screaming
And crying out loud for my mother;
A child unable to sleep
In the shadow of his war.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 14th. 2013.
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